Category Archives: review

Before I can review the first expansion for Civilization VI, let’s get something out of the way. There have been a lot of complaints about Civ VI, and Civ V before it, and I think they all boil down to two basic problems.

First, starting with Civ V, the team at Firaxis tried to incorporate real time strategy elements into the Civilization franchise. I don’t think many people will seriously argue there is even a close competitor to Civilization in the 4X strategy genre, so I believe most of Civ’s competition comes from the RTS genre, of which there are many good titles. Unfortunately, that attempt on their part was a mixed bag, leading to some of the problems players complain about in specific.

Second, and perhaps far more important, Civ has always had an AI problem. Back in the halcyon days of Civ I or II, nobody expected sophisticated AIs, and the game took full advantage of that fact by plain cheating to make the game harder. Modern players with modern hardware expect a modern AI, but the expansive nature of Civilization makes designing a good AI for the game a challenge at best. I’m not saying the team at Firaxis couldn’t do better, but I understand the challenge they face in doing it.

Keeping those things in mind, most of the things I could say bad about the Rise and Fall expansion are things I’ve already said bad about Civ VI itself. The game play is somewhat convoluted, the AI just dumb sometimes, and the execution sometimes excruciatingly slow.

It’s always dangerous to lead with things I don’t like in a review because that’s what people tend to remember, but the fact is Firaxis has one of the greatest gaming franchises in history in its care, and it needs to do better if it doesn’t want to go the way of EA and lose the loyalty of once fantastic titles like SimCity or Ubisoft with the Anno series.

All of the new elements to Rise and Fall add value to the game, but they’re understated and seem to be designed to add that familiar RTS anxiety to a 4X game. It doesn’t always work because I think it faces the player in the wrong direction. When Civ VI introduced things like districts, it was an intriguing advance on Civ’s core ideas. Instead of building on that, Firaxis has doubled down on the 4X in RTS clothing gambit it seems to have committed to in Civ V, and it still doesn’t quite seem to be working all the way.

Overall, I’d say wait on this expansion a bit yet. It’s not really worth the $29.99 Firaxis is asking for it for what you get, but if they’re listening to the community, future patches and DLCs may yet fix some of what doesn’t work as well as it could yet. If they don’t, there’ll be room for a new king of 4X. Or we can all go back to playing Civ IV, probably still the best entry into the franchise so far.

Yeah, so, iPad Pro. For those who know me, feel free to gasp. Now that we have that out of the way, here’s my first impression of it.

I bought the 265Gb WiFi version of the 12.9 inch iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard and Pencil as a compromise drawing slate solution. I’ve used Wacom drawing slates in the past and find I have a hard time drawing on one surface while looking at another, and I can’t afford Wacom’s Windows 10 drawing tablets just yet. Further, whether Windows users like it or not, Windows is not yet a superior platform for freehand drawing without compromises and significant investments in software and learning time.

Hence the iPad Pro. For the money, it has the best mix of capability, software, and frankly, ease of use of any platform out there. If I was going to spend this kind of money, I wanted a platform that worked out of the box with minimal fuss. So far, the iPad Pro delivers on those counts.

The device is solid and, to my surprise, heavier than I expected. That’s likely mostly the result of the battery, which gives me hope that it will last a while, even using the Bluetooth to use the Pencil. The screen is fabulous. Hands down, it’s the best resolution I’ve ever seen on a mobile device, so proper credit to Apple for that. The WiFi and Bluetooth worked as expected and with none of the onetime fuss over connecting to networks Apple had back when I was using their products regularly, so that is definitely a plus.

As a regular Android and Windows user, I found the idiosyncrasies of iOS to be just odd. I’ve used many Apple products in the past, so I know they can get a little narrow minded about their design philosophy, but things like limiting which screen widgets can appear on seem plain silly to me. Granted, I haven’t used it enough to identify if some of the other complaints about the operating system are warranted for me, but those kinds of limitations will guarantee this will be a specific purpose device for me.

App-wise, I love the diversity but hate the App Store. The store design seems to be intended to make things impossible to find unless you already know exactly what you are looking for. And, while yes I am spoiled because of the Play Store, the cost of actually useful apps is a little breathtaking.

My primary use for this tablet will be, for the time being, drawing and photo editing, neither of which I have done much of yet, but what I have played around with so far has been nice. I will report back on that later.

Overall, I am pleased with the iPad Pro. It does exactly what I expected it to do, if not exactly how I wish it would do it. As a first impression, Apple has made a good one.

After about 50 hours of game play so far, I am ready to declare Civilization VI the most Civilization-like entry in the storied franchise, which means some of you will love it more than all the rest and some of you will hate it more than any of the others.

What do I mean?

Civilization VI embraces the one thing all the rest of the games in the series have wanted to be with gusto: being a grand strategy game. Let’s face it, in the end the first five games often degenerated into little more than turn-based combat games with heavy emphasis on tech research and building. Civilization VI retains those traits while also introducing a whole new level of planning that requires the player to be thinking about how to win the game starting with the first turn.

The way the game does so is by clever use of the victory conditions and city districts. The victory conditions are no longer simply matters of who accumulates the most points and can be contended from the start of the game.

More importantly, the game breaks the city out of a single tile, forcing the player to consider how to expand each city by placing districts on tiles the city controls. this fact forces the player to specialize cities from the beginning of the game.

While these elements add a whole new level of play to Civilization VI, the game is hardly perfect. The religious system is vague and brutish and makes the religious victory less enjoyable than it could be. The game is missing diplomatic and economic victories that would help balance the game play. As has been true with every version of Civilization, the diplomatic system is inscrutable and annoying. That said, keep in mind this is the vanilla version of the game, and previous versions of the game have benefited from their later expansions.

All in all, I really like what Firaxis and crew have done with Civilization VI. It’s a good game with the potential to be great, and I will stick with it to see what the future holds for it.